


Coup de Grâce

by waterloosunset123



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: BAMF Rose, Because I can't write them without fluff., F/M, Fluff, Very vicious alien., Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-10 06:26:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3280103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterloosunset123/pseuds/waterloosunset123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He feels nothing below his left ankle, and his abdomen aches like it's been hollowed out and punctured and shredded a million times over. But that's okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coup de Grâce

One drop of the viscous, yellow venom dripping from the inch-thick claws of the creature currently launching itself at The Doctor could, theoretically, make him regenerate on the spot. No, not just theoretically. In fact, Time Lords have been known to be so compromised from a single scratch, that the regeneration process had taken literal weeks. As for human beings, frail as they are - they would last all of two seconds. By and large, thinks The Doctor as he sprints, it is the most lethal toxin in the entire Universe.

He tries to make the beast change directions constantly, weaving a complicated maze that irregularly turns back on itself in large squares and circles as he races through the giant redwoods (or redwood-like trees) around them. The confusion tactic simply doesn't work. He only succeeds in tripping and falling on rock. That's when he understands: the only way to sedate it is to outrun it and hide- to mount an ambush. Though its eyesight is poor, The Doctor discovers, its sense of smell is miraculous and its muscles shockingly quick. This is a problem, because, after nearly fifteen minutes of running, they've now reached a bright, mostly-barren clearing, one he wouldn't be able to get out of, unless he wanted to escape into the river, where the current crashes into the rocks on the shore with such force it leaps a full three meters into the air.

He stops a few yards away and pulls out his sonic, attempting to interfere with its brain-waves. But this species is a low-level telepath with which, he finds out, the sonic is unfortunately incompatible. Trust him to find new and exciting neurobiology when it's trying to end his life. It leaps again, and catches up to him.

A quadruped, its height at rest is twice The Doctor's more or less, but that means it is more than four times his size when it places all 10 tonnes on its foot-thick hind-legs and slams The Doctor into the ground. Full force.

There is an audible crack. He runs a quick systems check: both clavicles displaced and fragmented, comminuted humeral and scapular fractures on both sides, and severe trauma to the spine, but thankfully no significant fractures, or compressive injury to the spinal cord. 

Opening his eyes, The Doctor watches the trees tremble, his eardrums nearly pierced from the sonic pressure of what he realizes must be the creature's infrasonic roar. That fails to stop him, however, like so many things. Painful as it is, he pulls his arms and shoulders free from under its weight through sheer strength of will, and a vengeful (and powerful) double kick to its gut. The beast swipes as the Time Lord escapes from behind, its dripping claws, now out in full swing, missing its prey's face by mere inches. It's drooling-- rabid, almost-- for its meal already. But Time Lords are also quick and before long, The Doctor is already hidden, safe for the moment, lying flat on the ground in the middle of the thick shrubs closer to the riverbank than the woods.

He must stop it, he knows. His duty is to keep it from killing any more than it already has, no matter how much sympathy he has for it. As an adolescent, it was smuggled out of its home-world by criminals and dumped, dethroned, in another planet. The criminals then took over and rampaged through its rich native jungles. They didn't want a threat, naturally. Moved out, it refined its aggressive streak as it grew into an adult in the following decades, wiping out half the species of its new home and dwindling the neighbouring human population.

The Doctor stalls for a while. He breathes fast and shallow, and makes enough noise to guide it to follow the sound and his smell. It does. It sniffs closer; it breathes out, giving out a scent of metal and rotten meat. When The Doctor jerks back, it unwittingly swipes its venom-wet claws less than a centimetre away from The Doctor's hand. It hasn't actually seen him, so he freezes. Waits until it loses interest. And waits some more. The Doctor stops breathing for a full minute. Finally, it turns around to look somewhere else.

That's when The Doctor pounces, springing onto its back. He has to be quick. Knock it out telepathically as fast as he can.

It shakes side to side with the intrusion. Huge, powerful muscles force The Doctor to hang on to the violet mixture of fur and feather for dear life. He climbs, his shoulders on fire from the pain. They have glands on their skin, sometimes, so he tries not to pull at all because he's pretty sure he has open wounds on his palms (courtesy of the rocks he fell over in the mad dash to the clearing). The Doctor is about to touch its head- to bring it into a deep sleep -- when it gets on its hind legs faster and much more forcefully than he anticipates, and The Doctor falls painfully on his own spine from a height of about eleven or twelve feet. What's worse, in a reflex, it kicks backwards when it steadies itself, three times knocking the wind out of The Doctor's stomach so hard and so fast, his vision goes multicoloured and then black. His foot is also trampled by half its weight when it turns around to survey its prize, but by then, he has lost far too much consciousness to notice the pain.

The coup de grâce follows.

Only it doesn't.

There is a loud noise- a much louder, more piercing crack than the one before, a _gun_  - and it stops. It freezes, mid-assault, not breathing for a fraction of a second. A drop of blood falls, and it finally begins to fall. The Doctor rolls onto his belly and begins to crawl away, but he needs not do all the work when he feels somebody grab both his wrists and give a sharp tug which both pulls him out of danger, and wrenches a visceral shout of pain from his throat. There is an enormous noise as it hits the ground, and then merely silence in between The Doctor's soft, broken breaths rebounding from the earth.

 After that, it's all darkness. 

* * *

 When The Doctor next opens his eyes, she is sitting up, cross-legged, warm hands around one of his.

He speaks first, lying face down at her feet. "You okay?"

"Never mind me," Rose says. "Did it get you?"

"No." He sees, in a haze, the gun she used discarded by the tree far in front of him. He crawls a little so they are more or less shoulder to knee. Flips to his back so his abdomen doesn't feel too much like it's been hollowed out and punctured and shredded a million times over. He feels nothing below his left ankle, and his spine feels like the TARDIS landed on it without the transdimensional weight regulator. There is also the horrible sensation of electrical shocks running up and down both his arms. Still, he opens his eyes, blinks, and gazes up at her, smiling from ear to ear.

"You're mental," she admonishes, squeezing his non-bleeding hand.

"Yes, I am. No fun otherwise." And that doesn't quite come out with the bounce he'd intended.

It doesn't seem to amuse her, either.

"Just to be clear," she continues, sounding exasperated and exhausted in equal measure, "you _do_ know the reason no one was even _trying_ anymore is that it  _ate_ the entire battalion... and hundreds more?" He stays silent. "Skin practically thick enough to stop laser guns, you said." Her tone is the one in which she might as well have said  _It could have pulverised you, you idiot_.

So he whispers an apology that he tries very hard to mean and that she neither believes nor accepts. Because The Doctor apologising genuinely is rare. But The Doctor apologising for _recklessness_ when it's probably protected all of these people's lives just flat-out _isn't_  The Doctor.

There is a silence. Then something occurs to him. "How did you know that would be the one to work?" 

"Because," she answers, "it's the only molecule of tranquilliser they _never_ got the chance to try before the research team was killed."

His smile widens. "You found it?"

She nods, and he finds the smile that follows to be a thing of beauty. "Back room of the lab. Just had to be thorough."

"Lucky guess?"

"Maybe."

He giggles-- they both do-- until it makes his whole torso burn. 

She must have caught his wince, because she immediately asks him if he's really all right.

"Of course I am. Fit as a fiddle, me. Well, a badly-fractured, internally-bleeding fiddle that needs to go into a healing coma posthaste. But, still. I'll be fine. Don't worry." He smiles and pushes through the pain radiating through his arm in order to bring his free hand to the back of her neck, where his fingers tangle gently in her hair. "Thank you. For. You know. Everything."

She nods. "Always."

He smiles. "You shot it right in the eye."

"I did."

It should probably alarm him that the brief look on his face is one of unrestrained pride in her, but, upon further consideration, he finds it difficult to care, given the fact that she single-handedly saved his life. Again.

"In that case," he replies, "you're terrifying." He hopes she doesn't pick up on the unintended honesty behind the levity of the statement. On the fact that his feelings for her have grown and matured into something as powerful and daunting as the creature that they set out to help today. It's certainly as close to a confession as he wants to make at the moment.

She takes it, mercifully, as banter. Smiles and lies down by his side.

"Yeah," she says, voice light and flirty, "turns out I'm actually dangerous. So you better watch out, Doctor." And, oh, he is. Watching her. Can't help but. Not with that smile, or those eyes, or that ... _humanity._ (He must be going into his coma faster than he thought. Did he discuss healing comas with Rose? He seems to remember he did, as a new man last Boxing Day).

He turns partially to face her. His left shoulder protests -a lot. He pays it no mind.

When she asks how long the coma will last, she's so close she only has to whisper. It should alarm him as much as it thrills him, the physical closeness, but it doesn't. It never does. Neither does the way she places her hand lightly on his other shoulder. It distracts him from the pain.

"A couple of hours," he answers. "A week at most. Where's our friend?" 

"In a shuttle back home as we speak. Everyone's safe and sound. I'll take you back to the TARDIS, okay? Get the medics to help me move you to the sick bay. Maybe the zero room?"

"Nah. 'S nice here." He closes his eyes. In a matter of seconds, his pulse slows down. His consciousness begins to hibernate. Looks like this coma is starting with or without him. "'S very nice here."

Barely hanging on, he doesn't second-guess himself. He pulls her to him and kisses her once, gently. 

"I'll see you later."

Seconds later, he blissfully blacks out for the next 36 hours.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Any feedback at all is most welcome. My first original alien character: you like?  
> 19-APRIL-2015 and 16-APRIL-2017- I've updated. Again. Now it's complete. I swear. For good this time.


End file.
